Lassie's Lament
by Arynn Octavia
Summary: Henry Spencer learns a thing or two about Carlton Lassiter. Shawn Spencer/Carlton Lassiter pre-slash minific. Sequel to Psychological Evaluations.


A/N: Sequel to Psychological Evaluations. Takes place during Season 2 Episode 11: Lassie Did a Bad Bad Thing

Head detective Carlton Lassiter had been suspended while the department investigated his possible involvement in the shooting death of Ernesto Chavez, a gang member who had been killed in police custody. For some reason, I don't know what, Shawn and Gus had pawned him off on me to babysit, as if I didn't have better things to do. I had spent some time with the detective; back when he had gone on a few fishing trips with me, but had never really had an in-depth conversation with the guy. I was royally pissed at first, but I ended up learning a thing or two about the man.

First off, I learned that detective Lassiter ate when he was nervous. A lot. He finished off my cereal and milk, two pints of Ben & Jerry's, and a thick-cut porterhouse, all before the sun had gone down. After that I had broken out an old bottle of cheap scotch I had on hand, in attempts to make sure he lay of my more expensive liquor.

Soon after I learned that the man, who from my experience only spoke when he had something pertinent to say, talked a lot when he was drunk. A lot.

He had started talking about the case, his fears about the investigation, his partner being assigned a new partner. In a stream of consciousness move that oddly made sense, he moved on to his separation, comparing his wife leaving him to his current partner abandoning him. It was obvious that he was more upset about Juliet's "betrayal" than his not-yet-ex's. Then it was relationships he was talking about. I just couldn't get him to shut up. After that was when the semi-logical stream of consciousness ended, or so I thought at first, because all of a sudden he was talking about Shawn.

"You know Spencer—Henry, that's some kid you've got there."

"Yeah, I know. He's something special."

"I know." I raised an eyebrow, but he didn't seem to realize what he had said. He continued, "I don't know how he does what he does, and I suspect you do, but I really appreciate his belief in me during this whole thing."

"Yeah, well in my experience, if Shawn says a man is innocent, the man is innocent."

"Shawn—Spencer." He looked thoughtfully down into his glass, swirling his dry ice cubes around the bottom before grabbing the bottle and filling the glass to the top again. He tossed back half of it in one gulp, and put the glass back down on the coaster I had put on the coffee table in front of him. He picked up a nearby photo album, flipping through it. A smile lit his face when he found that it was full of pictures of Shawn. He turned the pages more slowly, then, taking in all the details he could. He moved through the album, eyes roving over Shawn's life as I had laid it out, chronologically. It was strange to see him with that smile on his face, given what I knew of his relationship with my son. As far as I could tell, Shawn annoyed the hell out of the man, a not uncommon reaction, to be honest. He had been annoying the hell out of me for the last 32 years. I was at least glad the detective had finally shut up.

Things took a turn for the strange when he reached the most recent picture in the book, one I had taken a couple weeks before, at Christmas. In it Shawn was smiling one of his rare smiles, the ones that held no attitude. He was wearing a Santa hat, and Gus was leaning in close to him, smiling deviously at the camera and holding a pair of bunny ears behind Shawn's head. The detective tilted his head at the photo, the smile on his face replaced with a different kind of look, one I couldn't place. It looked thoughtful, a strange look to see on the face of someone who's smashed, to be sure.

"You astound me," he said, and at first I thought he was talking to me, before he raised his hand to the page of the book, tracing his finger along the line of Shawn's jaw in the photo.

Woah!

My mind was going a mile a minute. Shawn had told me back when he was a teenager, right after his mom left, that he was bisexual. I had never seen him date a guy since then, so I had assumed he had only said that to piss me off. I did have suspicions about Shawn's behavior whenever he was around the detective, but now I was wondering if there actually was something going on between the two of them. Always the protective father, I had to find out.

"So, Lassiter," I spoke, waiting for him to look up at me before I continued, "are you seeing anyone right now?"

"Nope," he shook his head, bleary eyes maintaining contact with mine. He was telling the truth.

"Do you want to be?"

With a sigh he looked back down at the photo of Shawn, his fingers still laying on its surface where he had left them from earlier. He didn't answer.

"Does he know?" I asked.

He slowly looked back up at me, finally realizing that I knew what he had been thinking. "No, he doesn't," he said.

The End

I'm in the process of writing a sequel to this sequel, which will take the pre- out of pre-slash.


End file.
